5 ms·

While I can appreciate the author's nostalgia, I cannot really agree on some of the criticism: The manure problem is a problem at any size of farm, the amount

by corty 6y ago

While I can appreciate the author's nostalgia, I cannot really agree on some of the criticism: The manure problem is a problem at any size of farm, the amount of manure per cow is somewhat constant. So concentrating all the cows in some factory farm doesn't really make anything worse as long as the total number of cows is somewhat constant. The undocumented immigrant labour problem isn't as big a problem as the family farms' systemic problem of child labour and child exploitation. Which the author glosses over in his point of view. To feed a growing population on earth, we do need industrial farming. Maybe not so much cattle. But in general, higher efficiency and more professional operations should be applauded. Yes, that means that family farms will be gone at some point.

CuriouslyC 6y ago
Manure isn't a problem if you free range your animals, have landscape structures to prevent runoff and have other animals that eat bugs in the same space such as chickens. Then it just contributes fertility to the land. Children working their family farm are learning real skills. Learning how to produce food is vastly more important than american history or most of the literature they would learn in school. Industrial farming is stupid, and totally unnecessary. Using permaculture and silvopasture, you can produce much more (and more nutritious) food in the same space, while improving (rather than destroying) fertility. If done right, you don't need pesticides, your animals don't need antibiotics or dewormers, and the whole thing mostly runs itself aside from a little pruning/herding and a lot of picking. The only downside to these methods is they take some time to get going, and they require knowledgeable farm workers rather than dirt cheap migrant laborers or a combine.
- corty 6y ago
  > Manure isn't a problem if you free range your animals, have landscape structures to prevent runoff and have other animals that eat bugs in the same space such as chickens. Then it just contributes fertility to the land. I would contest that. Animal manure runoff has always been a problem to e.g. brooks and rivers and only in recent years has the legislation started to prevent some of the more problematic practices. Like grazing all your cattle on a soon-to-be-flooded grassland next to the river. Nitrate pollution of the ground water is also more pronounced in German areas where free-range animals are more common. > Industrial farming is stupid, and totally unnecessary. Using permaculture and silvopasture, you can produce much more (and more nutritious) food in the same space, while improving (rather than destroying) fertility. If done right, you don't need pesticides, your animals don't need antibiotics or dewormers, and the whole thing mostly runs itself aside from a little pruning/herding and a lot of picking. The only downside to these methods is they take some time to get going, and they require knowledgeable farm workers rather than dirt cheap migrant laborers or a combine. If it were only farmer's knowledge that is required, farming industry would do it in an instant, considering the significant advantages you named. I would guess that either the methods you mention are far more labour-intensive as well as requiring more qualified labour. Or that the advantages aren't really that significant. Industrial agriculture is hunting for every bit of efficiency gain, and lots of businesses are looking for an edge any way they can. So it seems strange to me that the methods you mention aren't used in any significant amount.
  - CuriouslyC 6y ago
    If you aren't running a ridiculous number of head per acre and you have swales cut into your land to control runoff, manure is absolutely not a problem. Permaculture + Silvopasture is labor intensive at harvest for sure, because you can't just run a tree shaker or tractor down rows, but you need to forage through a food forest which requires some knowledge and care. The bigger downside for industrial farmers is that instead of one product you can unload to a co-op easily, you have 30+ crops you need to find a market for. In my experience a lot of farmers are fairly set in their ways. Even 100% win solutions like no till planting with cover crop grazing are being taken up very slowly.
neolog 6y ago
Currently kids spend a lot of their time working in schools; I'm guessing working on farms might be better or worse depending on the farm and the school, but I don't know much about it. Where can I learn more?
phillc73 6y ago
> The manure problem is a problem at any size of farm, the amount of manure per cow is somewhat constant. So concentrating all the cows in some factory farm doesn't really make anything worse as long as the total number of cows is somewhat constant. I wonder if this is true. Perhaps the real problem is the concentration of such a large amount of waste in those manure lakes. I don't have any fixed evidence or numbers, but recalling my youth working on a 200 - 250 cow dairy, the animals were strip grazed in paddocks during the day and night. They would therefore mostly defecate in the paddock, on the grass, spread across a wider area and acting as a natural fertiliser. There was a small manure pond with wastewater from the dairy itself, but this was not large. Problems with large manure lakes intuitively seem more likely as the nitrates and other nasties are concentrated, something which doesn't seem as bad with the same amount of manure spread across a grassy paddock.
- Laforet 6y ago
  This is indeed the case. On the other side of the same issue, the loss of large mammals in the wild slows down the natural cycling of nitrogen and this has a knock-on effect that leads to further loss of biomass. This has been an issue since the start of human civilization but intensive herding of animals certainly did not help.
- corty 6y ago
  > I don't have any fixed evidence or numbers, but recalling my youth working on a 200 - 250 cow dairy, the animals were strip grazed in paddocks during the day and night. They would therefore mostly defecate in the paddock, on the grass, spread across a wider area and acting as a natural fertiliser. This is something the author mentions in passing: Almost everywhere, farms are required by law to have a certain amount of land per piece of cattle to spread the manure on. So as long as that certain amount of land is large enough and the spreading happens sufficiently often, there shouldn't be a problem. If there is a problem, current regulations need to be updated. That land requirement will also naturally limit the total amount of cattle that is being raised.
CaptArmchair 6y ago
> the total number of cows is somewhat constant. But the number of cows isn't constant. The entire premise of the article is a demonstration of how large numbers and power laws work in economics. > To feed a growing population on earth, we do need industrial farming. Do we? That's a massively contested debate. See: (Neo)Malthusianism. > But in general, higher efficiency and more professional operations should be applauded These aren't virtues that one should blindly laud if the net result is externalizing costs towards the commons: society and ecology. What's the point of being able to feed 8 or 9 billion people on the planet, if quality of life for the majority of those individuals is rather low? The article rightly points at the glaring moral questions beneath all of this.
- corty 6y ago
  >> To feed a growing population on earth, we do need industrial farming. > Do we? That's a massively contested debate. See: (Neo)Malthusianism. On the one hand, you dismiss my population growth argument as "Malthusianism" (which I don't consider a counter-argument at all, it is just naming things). But on the other hand you acknowledge that we cannot just feed ever more people: > What's the point of being able to feed 8 or 9 billion people on the planet, if quality of life for the majority of those individuals is rather low? So on one hand you are dismissing my argument as Malthusian, on the other hand you are making a very Malthusian argument yourself. My argument would be: I agree with you that mankind needs to shrink and right-size so the then-sustainable population can have some level of comfort for everyone.
ilikerashers 6y ago
On family farms (and my own), manure is used as fertilizer. On factory farms most manure is disposed of and animals fed on grain. Children of parents on a family farm is hardly exploitation. Paying illegal immigrants sub minimum wage to squeeze additional profit out of the land certainly is a bigger problem. Do we need industrial farming if it's driven by big capital? If the industry is happy to damage the environment, flout labor laws, harm animal welfare is it worth it? Personally I think the cost is too high and if anything, food is too cheap now.
- corty 6y ago
  > Children of parents on a family farm is hardly exploitation. How so? I know it often isn't against labor laws because there are specific exceptions for exactly that case. But in any other circumstance the same thing _is_ considered exploitative.
  - ilikerashers 6y ago
    Answered below but there is a difference between a full time job and doing chores around a farm. If you can't see the nuance in that then I suggest you visit a family farm some day.
gizmondo 6y ago
> The undocumented immigrant labour problem isn't as big a problem as the family farms' systemic problem of child labour and child exploitation. Which the author glosses over in his point of view. He doesn't gloss over it, he glorifies it as "family bonding" or something. It's disgusting.
- ilikerashers 6y ago
  How? Helping on a family farm has been done for generations. A corporate exploiting Illegal immigration is a preferred solution? Interesting values.
  - gizmondo 6y ago
    Owning slaves was also done for generations, so not sure what your point is. Both are bad, but according to my values exploiting children is somewhat worse than exploiting adults, yes.
    - ilikerashers 6y ago
      Do you classify helping with chores around the house as child exploitation too? As on a farm, kids have chores. They're not working night and day.
      - gizmondo 6y ago
        They often work _way_ more than other children. If your kid is doing "chores around the house" for hours every day, it's exploitation too.
      - joerandom 6y ago
        Do you have ANY idea how chores on a farm look like? Hint: it's nothing like vacuming or taking dishes out from a dishwasher. It's lots of hard work. Dealing with excrements and dangerous animals (even a cow or pig is dangerous in confined spaces).
TrispusAttucks 6y ago
This logic seems wrong. By definition pollution is a problem of location and concentration.

by corty 6y ago

CuriouslyC 6y ago

Manure isn't a problem if you free range your animals, have landscape structures to prevent runoff and have other animals that eat bugs in the same space such as chickens. Then it just contributes fertility to the land. Children working their family farm are learning real skills. Learning how to produce food is vastly more important than american history or most of the literature they would learn in school. Industrial farming is stupid, and totally unnecessary. Using permaculture and silvopasture, you can produce much more (and more nutritious) food in the same space, while improving (rather than destroying) fertility. If done right, you don't need pesticides, your animals don't need antibiotics or dewormers, and the whole thing mostly runs itself aside from a little pruning/herding and a lot of picking. The only downside to these methods is they take some time to get going, and they require knowledgeable farm workers rather than dirt cheap migrant laborers or a combine.

corty 6y ago
> Manure isn't a problem if you free range your animals, have landscape structures to prevent runoff and have other animals that eat bugs in the same space such as chickens. Then it just contributes fertility to the land. I would contest that. Animal manure runoff has always been a problem to e.g. brooks and rivers and only in recent years has the legislation started to prevent some of the more problematic practices. Like grazing all your cattle on a soon-to-be-flooded grassland next to the river. Nitrate pollution of the ground water is also more pronounced in German areas where free-range animals are more common. > Industrial farming is stupid, and totally unnecessary. Using permaculture and silvopasture, you can produce much more (and more nutritious) food in the same space, while improving (rather than destroying) fertility. If done right, you don't need pesticides, your animals don't need antibiotics or dewormers, and the whole thing mostly runs itself aside from a little pruning/herding and a lot of picking. The only downside to these methods is they take some time to get going, and they require knowledgeable farm workers rather than dirt cheap migrant laborers or a combine. If it were only farmer's knowledge that is required, farming industry would do it in an instant, considering the significant advantages you named. I would guess that either the methods you mention are far more labour-intensive as well as requiring more qualified labour. Or that the advantages aren't really that significant. Industrial agriculture is hunting for every bit of efficiency gain, and lots of businesses are looking for an edge any way they can. So it seems strange to me that the methods you mention aren't used in any significant amount.
- CuriouslyC 6y ago
  If you aren't running a ridiculous number of head per acre and you have swales cut into your land to control runoff, manure is absolutely not a problem. Permaculture + Silvopasture is labor intensive at harvest for sure, because you can't just run a tree shaker or tractor down rows, but you need to forage through a food forest which requires some knowledge and care. The bigger downside for industrial farmers is that instead of one product you can unload to a co-op easily, you have 30+ crops you need to find a market for. In my experience a lot of farmers are fairly set in their ways. Even 100% win solutions like no till planting with cover crop grazing are being taken up very slowly.

neolog 6y ago

Currently kids spend a lot of their time working in schools; I'm guessing working on farms might be better or worse depending on the farm and the school, but I don't know much about it. Where can I learn more?

phillc73 6y ago

> The manure problem is a problem at any size of farm, the amount of manure per cow is somewhat constant. So concentrating all the cows in some factory farm doesn't really make anything worse as long as the total number of cows is somewhat constant. I wonder if this is true. Perhaps the real problem is the concentration of such a large amount of waste in those manure lakes. I don't have any fixed evidence or numbers, but recalling my youth working on a 200 - 250 cow dairy, the animals were strip grazed in paddocks during the day and night. They would therefore mostly defecate in the paddock, on the grass, spread across a wider area and acting as a natural fertiliser. There was a small manure pond with wastewater from the dairy itself, but this was not large. Problems with large manure lakes intuitively seem more likely as the nitrates and other nasties are concentrated, something which doesn't seem as bad with the same amount of manure spread across a grassy paddock.

Laforet 6y ago
This is indeed the case. On the other side of the same issue, the loss of large mammals in the wild slows down the natural cycling of nitrogen and this has a knock-on effect that leads to further loss of biomass. This has been an issue since the start of human civilization but intensive herding of animals certainly did not help.
corty 6y ago
> I don't have any fixed evidence or numbers, but recalling my youth working on a 200 - 250 cow dairy, the animals were strip grazed in paddocks during the day and night. They would therefore mostly defecate in the paddock, on the grass, spread across a wider area and acting as a natural fertiliser. This is something the author mentions in passing: Almost everywhere, farms are required by law to have a certain amount of land per piece of cattle to spread the manure on. So as long as that certain amount of land is large enough and the spreading happens sufficiently often, there shouldn't be a problem. If there is a problem, current regulations need to be updated. That land requirement will also naturally limit the total amount of cattle that is being raised.

CaptArmchair 6y ago

> the total number of cows is somewhat constant. But the number of cows isn't constant. The entire premise of the article is a demonstration of how large numbers and power laws work in economics. > To feed a growing population on earth, we do need industrial farming. Do we? That's a massively contested debate. See: (Neo)Malthusianism. > But in general, higher efficiency and more professional operations should be applauded These aren't virtues that one should blindly laud if the net result is externalizing costs towards the commons: society and ecology. What's the point of being able to feed 8 or 9 billion people on the planet, if quality of life for the majority of those individuals is rather low? The article rightly points at the glaring moral questions beneath all of this.

corty 6y ago
>> To feed a growing population on earth, we do need industrial farming. > Do we? That's a massively contested debate. See: (Neo)Malthusianism. On the one hand, you dismiss my population growth argument as "Malthusianism" (which I don't consider a counter-argument at all, it is just naming things). But on the other hand you acknowledge that we cannot just feed ever more people: > What's the point of being able to feed 8 or 9 billion people on the planet, if quality of life for the majority of those individuals is rather low? So on one hand you are dismissing my argument as Malthusian, on the other hand you are making a very Malthusian argument yourself. My argument would be: I agree with you that mankind needs to shrink and right-size so the then-sustainable population can have some level of comfort for everyone.

ilikerashers 6y ago

On family farms (and my own), manure is used as fertilizer. On factory farms most manure is disposed of and animals fed on grain. Children of parents on a family farm is hardly exploitation. Paying illegal immigrants sub minimum wage to squeeze additional profit out of the land certainly is a bigger problem. Do we need industrial farming if it's driven by big capital? If the industry is happy to damage the environment, flout labor laws, harm animal welfare is it worth it? Personally I think the cost is too high and if anything, food is too cheap now.

corty 6y ago
> Children of parents on a family farm is hardly exploitation. How so? I know it often isn't against labor laws because there are specific exceptions for exactly that case. But in any other circumstance the same thing _is_ considered exploitative.
- ilikerashers 6y ago
  Answered below but there is a difference between a full time job and doing chores around a farm. If you can't see the nuance in that then I suggest you visit a family farm some day.

gizmondo 6y ago

> The undocumented immigrant labour problem isn't as big a problem as the family farms' systemic problem of child labour and child exploitation. Which the author glosses over in his point of view. He doesn't gloss over it, he glorifies it as "family bonding" or something. It's disgusting.

ilikerashers 6y ago
How? Helping on a family farm has been done for generations. A corporate exploiting Illegal immigration is a preferred solution? Interesting values.
- gizmondo 6y ago
  Owning slaves was also done for generations, so not sure what your point is. Both are bad, but according to my values exploiting children is somewhat worse than exploiting adults, yes.
  - ilikerashers 6y ago
    Do you classify helping with chores around the house as child exploitation too? As on a farm, kids have chores. They're not working night and day.
    - gizmondo 6y ago
      They often work _way_ more than other children. If your kid is doing "chores around the house" for hours every day, it's exploitation too.
    - joerandom 6y ago
      Do you have ANY idea how chores on a farm look like? Hint: it's nothing like vacuming or taking dishes out from a dishwasher. It's lots of hard work. Dealing with excrements and dangerous animals (even a cow or pig is dangerous in confined spaces).

TrispusAttucks 6y ago

This logic seems wrong. By definition pollution is a problem of location and concentration.